Greetings! My husband and I recently returned from a wonderful two-week trip to Southern Africa, during which we were able to visit 7 countries! We flew in to Zimbabwe (where we visited the majestic Victoria Falls, which a fellow traveler referred to as “waterfalls on steroids!”), were driven to Botswana (where we did a river safari and land safari, only managing to see 2 of the Big Five), did a short day trip into Namibia (Impalila Island, which is on the Caprivi Strip – a narrow stretch of land that extends from Namibia, between the Botswana and Zambia borders), were driven to the Zambezi River to do a short boat ride across the river to Zambia (during which we were able to see Zimbabwe, Botswana, Zambia, and Namibia at once, as they all “meet” in that area, and we also saw a third animal from the Big Five), and we then flew to Eswatini (known as Swaziland until 2018). From Swaziland, we flew to two points in South Africa: Durban, from where we went to Underberg and did a day trip to Lesotho; and Cape Town. This brings my country count to 66.
I’ve designated separate pages within this post for each of the countries/portions of the trip, and will put specific details in each section, accordingly. In general, everywhere we went, people were very friendly and we felt safe. We often heard locals say, “welcome home” or “welcome to your home away from home.” One interesting quirk were some of the names that I assume some of the locals that we met adopted for themselves. One person who picked us up from one of the airports said his name was “Doubt,” which was reflected on his name tag and pronounced accordingly. We also had a waiter named Rest, and a tour guide named Muffin. Also, we noticed in some places that they were attempting to “go green,” by using paper straws, for example, while for the most part, there were no recycling options that we could see. Another main observation was that, even though we traveled to Southern Africa at the end of the rainy season, they did not have any rain for two months during this year’s rainy season, which was very unusual, and significantly impacted the subsistence farmers. It did rain a couple of times while we were there, but it was largely sunny and warm in all of the areas we visited (with the exception of Lesotho, which is at a significantly higher elevation than any of the other locations we visited).
BoKaap in Cape Town 
Nelson Mandela art statue 
African Penguins at Boulder’s Beach 
View from Table Mountain
As usual, information herein was gathered during tours or from published materials, and any errors are unintentional and are mine. In addition, the photos were primarily taken by myself, but there are a few that were taken by my husband. To get a feel for the areas we visited, read on…first up, Zimbabwe.
Please note that Botswana is out of order for some reason. So, at the bottom of this post, please click on “previous post” to see Botswana (though it should come after Zimbabwe), and then click on “next post” at the bottom of that postto move forward in the order of the posts.